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Sunday, March 30, 2014

Sharp dip in trade volumes in India's commodity exchanges

Trading volume of commodity exchanges fell 51 per cent to Rs 3.43 lakh crore in the first fortnight of March due to decline in volumes across the board except farm products.

30 Mar 2014

MUMBAI (Commodity Online): Sharp dip wwas witnessed in commodity futures trading volume in 2013-14 with total turn over from April 1 2013-March 15 2014 falling 40% to Rs 98.57 lakh crore against Rs 164.79lakh crore in the corresponding period last fiscal. The impact of commodity transaction tax and over all bearish trends in commodities impacted overall trading sentiments, according to analysts. Except agri-commodities, all other categories of commodities witnessed fall in trade volume.

Trading volume of commodity exchanges fell 51 per cent to Rs 3.43 lakh crore in the first fortnight of March due to decline in volumes across the board except farm products.

Turnover of all the 17 commodity exchanges offering futures trading in the country, including MCX, NCDEX and NMCE, was Rs 6.96 lakh crore in the same period last year, according to the Forward Markets Commission data.

Trading volumes on the bourses have been hit after the imposition of commodity transaction tax. Besides, investors are also trading cautiously after the Rs 5,500-crore payment crisis came to light on National Spot Exchange Ltd (NSEL) a few months ago.

Turnover from bullion witnessed a maximum fall of over 62 per cent to Rs 1.16 lakh crore during March 1-15 from Rs 3.07 lakh crore in the year-ago period.

However, there was an increase in the turnover of agri-commodities by over 17 per cent to Rs 94,680 crore during March 1-15 from Rs 80,913 crore in the year-ago period.

To boost the trading volumes, FMC has given freedom to national-level bourses to charge different transaction fee. It has also allowed them to levy different transaction fee based on delivery and non-delivery based contracts.